Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

Interview With Microsoft's Casey McGee

2011-02-19
hey everyone this is Anton denied from pocket now calm and we are here in Barcelona Spain at the Mobile World Congress were last year Steve Ballmer and the keynote house windows phone 7 and one year later joining us today is mr. Casey McGee with Microsoft he can see you Mike marketing manager right and we have some questions we might ask hopefully we will get some answers and most of the questions are in the light of recent events which happen but let me just start with the first question once windows phone a successful platform launched wise was it a successful launch worn out it absolutely was as your reference last year we introduced windows phone 7 for the first time and we really focused on it having a different sort of value to people it's a it's a different design it's an integrated experiences and we spent a lot of time last year trying to do see if people would respond to and how they appreciate the idea of things like live tiles of hubs and the way we bring information together and surface it in a way that's immediate really really valuable we started launching bones in the fall and certainly in the November timeframe so it's been about three months we've had phones and market and what we've seen is a satisfaction is very very high you know over ninety percent by most measures and that tells us that people who experience the phone really really love the phone they tell their friends they love the phone and that's the most important first step we're starting a new product getting that feedback and knowing it if you got it you love it if you've got a product that people love bidden to build on that and that's really what this mobile world congress is about is feeling good about what we've done in the first year and talking about what we're going to do next to build on that success so that's Friday Steve Ballmer and steaming up Microsoft and no kia announced a strategic alliance and yeah they both emphasize that this strategic alliance will be good for both Nokia both microsoft also the users developers and operators but really for whom is this the latest deal it's genuinely about improving an ecosystem for both companies we succeed when there's a healthy ecosystem feeding at both companies in the markets that we serve so certainly nokia has a tremendous experience with hardware innovations with services and bringing great foams to a number of markets around the world microsoft obviously it's been focus on software and you feel very good about what we've put forth with smartphone software in windows phone 7 and doing something a little bit different that resonates with the end-users you put those two concepts together and you create a brand new opportunity for developers for other partners retail anybody involved in the in the phone chain and to have a different kind of phone and a new opportunity to create apps and games and services to really localized content to take advantage of search and location to create brand new opportunities within your local market in your town there's just a number of ways that we think the ecosystem can rally around this partnership and do something completely different from what's an end bluff for today so it really is a win win win win win situation everybody absolutely that's the goal getting back to yesterday's keynote Steve Ballmer announced that there will be some features to win this on this year and also reference that there will be an update the first update for windows phone 7 at the beginning of March now I know Microsoft never emphasized and never sinned publicly when exactly that updatable hit everybody expected it to hit summer in january or februari because we heard about early two thousand why was the copy paste update we call it the copy paste update deal aids to march it's not so much a delay it's as we talked about we wanted to introduce windows phone 7 make sure we had great experiences and job one was making sure anybody can picked up and use the phone had that great experience and we did that by ensuring that what we ship worked great in that meant there are some things that would have to come a little later and copy and paste was one of those and as we started testing the product and getting feedback from customers we realized that it has to be one of the next features we add is copy and paste so as we were shipping the product we were getting ready to add copy paste some improved performance for applications and building that update the process of creating and shipping an update is obviously building the code and then working with our partners to make sure this is distributed in a way that that works for the customer works for the network and works across all devices and so that's really what we've been doing for the past few weeks it's just making sure that everything is staged and ready to be pushed out okay one question related to your personal experience within this 17 I curious about that my favorite feature is people what's your favorite feature what are you most proud of and with this one so you know it changes I go back and forth between the music and video experience and pictures but as a new father it has to be pictures i love the fact that you know the pocket the picture feature where i can pull out my camera and take a picture my daughter in a matter of seconds i take advantage that all the time i love that my pictures all come together in the hub has my wife post pictures comes into the pictures hub we can manage everything from from one place I can post up to facebook so i think the the older my daughter gets in the work she does and where I use the picture of and what do you think could use that most improvement and this one I think probably it is the People Hub because people enjoy that experience and because it is so critical to the phone I think for example the fact that we are bringing Twitter integration is a great example of how we can continue to expand you know windows phone is a platform we're going to continue to improve on all of these experiences over time and we hope that's what people take away from mobile Congress as pertaining to the people up the Twitter integration great example we're going to look for every opportunity to continue to add value and make sure that our design and great experiences are surfacing the things that people care about in a meaningful way as we do that there's a platform can we also expect some integration from other services now we have facebook we have yahoo we have google we will have twitter can we expect also linked in my space certainly nothing to announce at this time i would say in general you look at the hubs and the fact that we do want to bring services and experiences together we're always looking at what are the right services and experiences to bring together in all of the hubs you know similarly office we brought more office documents to the office hub by taking advantage of SkyDrive music and video will continue to look at how we can improve that when you look at the gaming experience we started to show some scenarios where we can improve the gaming experience and bring things for the game hub and certainly the People Hub will continue to be a hub that we've invested in print Griffith Instagram well getting a little bit bets you of the windows launch which is approximately plus four months ago we have started with nine devices from which let's say there are approximately only seven on the market because the HTC 7 bro destined for spring as cdma device started hidden europe and the gsm version and the lil venue bro has not reached the european market yet so let's say we have seven devices what do you think we can expect the second wave of devices when we will other devices be added to the portfolio from a manufacturing point that's really a more partners you know we certainly continue to advance the platform you see the updates we work very very closely with all of our partners to ensure they have what they need that are compelling new designs out there and I'm certain that they're evaluating what their minor certain look like in the foreseeable future but you know again really nothing to announce today about what additional devices you may see when can we hear about chassis to specifications approximately or if we are going to hear in the near future there's really nothing new to say about specifications you know certainly you know we'll continue to evolve the platform create those opportunities the next milestone will be talking subsequently about the platform I will be in the next time frame so people who are looking at the announcements made at Mobile World Congress and wondering what it means to developers to other partners understanding more about any change of specification around Internet Explorer certainly multitasking and creating third-party applications makes will be a great event to learn a lot more about how you can get ready for the year ahead and they're talking about hardware well there's a feature i'm not using at the moment and then not found that using its scope video going and with those stone setting does not support it at the moment do you think and many of our readers as this question will windows phone seven support vehicle will we see hardware with front facing cameras I think we don't have hardware at the moment because there is no software support or vice versa that's exactly right it's the conversation that we have with our partners we work together to understand what the customer wants where there's demand and then understand what devices to build and what software to create to take advantage of that so certainly nothing to announce today about a timeline except to say that that is certainly a feature that we're watching it's certainly something that we talked about because our bombers it's you know it's something that certainly could be done if it's prioritized and if we and our partners jointly decide that something that needs to be built but if that's going to happen or when I really can't say today okay there's a there's been an announcement this week it was involving sony ericsson xperia play running another platform and our readers s that's test the slide-out gaming controls will we ever get the chance to see a xbox Windows Phone ever is a long time you know again there's nothing to announce today but certainly safe to say that when you look at the variety of experiences that we've created with Windows Phone 7 there are opportunities to do a number of things but as it stands today we stayed very strict with the guidelines the chassis special we have for windows phone 7 so you know the opportunities there and there was market and there was demand to do something like that I'm sure we'd be in conversation we had with our partners but as it is today we're we're building on those experiences that we've been successful with thus far and we'll stick with those you know those specifications a quick question this one is for me I'm living in Romania and well you can buy windows phone 7 harbor in Romania there's definitely no support for Windows Live services I mean we don't have that there which is a huge drawback from the market share from the sales point of view do you think we can ever expect or if yes when an expansion of the life services marketplace zoom so on so that I think that will really boost the sales and the market share 4-1 yeah we're slowly but surely expanding the reach of our services our availability our language support even and you know every periodically we've had some updates we talked about some you know some some better visualization for the phone there's nothing new in terms of the specific regions that we're going to be expanded to nothing we can talk about for a roadmap perspective except to say that you're right we certainly understand this coming well I can't say to which countries it's coming in what order of excess fat but I would agree that the services are our large component of you know what people love about Windows Phone and we certainly understand that we want to make that as strong an experience as we can for as many customers as possible and there are estimates that effect there's a lot of buzz lately regarding near-field communication NFC and it's available I mean the other platform has its support built-in will we ever get the chance to see support for NFC or other mobile payments support any windows phone setting again I think there's there's a number of really interesting technologies and topics that there is potential to incorporate it into Windows Phone and things that we evaluate with our partners understand where there's demand what the long-term trajectory is a support for those sorts of things and then we determine whether or not that's something that we want I archives and so I would say that's in the same category and you know it'll be evaluated and sort of stats ranked and we'll figure out what to prioritize your future business getting back a little bit in the enzyme to do windows phone 7 launch could you give us a few examples of windows phone seven large successes but also figures well certainly from a success standpoint we felt very very good about the number of devices the partnerships that we had and our ability to have a wide range compelling applications and games available at launch there's nothing that we're looking at as a failure but certainly if we had more time if we you know if titles if it resources were infinite you know we would have liked to have some of the additional features like incorporating Twitter we would have liked to have coffee and page earlier we would have liked to have been in warm regions we would like to have broader service support we certainly understand there are things we can do to improve upon the experiences for customers around the globe but there's nothing that we felt bad about you know we wouldn't have shifted product if we didn't feel like we were putting something out there that people would genuinely enjoy and and generate the sort of satisfaction rates that we've seen I have a question here from one of my colleagues he says what are some of the strengths of Android and iOS that windows from selling would do well and emulating we don't feel like it's so much a matter emulating I think broadly and you know you look at competing platforms and they have definitely showed that there is demand and much broader demand for smartphones that customer behaviors have change that they're using handheld technology very differently and that it's more broadly applicable and that's one of the reasons that we did started with Windows Phone 7 we wanted to create something that had broader appeal that was a little more user friendly it would really surface the things that people care about and in fact you saw a way to do a little bit better I think some of the competition managed to create a little bit more excitement more opportunity by servicing surfacing a lot of individual applications and showing just how many functions you can get on to a phone what we learn from that is you need to take the next step it's not just for functions on the phone it's how you organize them and you make them friendly and you or I shouldn't have to go find the functions and things we care about it should come to us it should be surfaced it should be glanceable so certainly we saw the competition doing a good job of consumer eyes and local technology creating a broader know kind of a keel and we want to build on that and do a little better job going to take it to the next level so even more people are using mobile technology okay at last question is related to the feature Steve Ballmer announced and the also nokia my croissant deal thinking these both into consideration when do you think we might see a climb in market share for windows phone 7 when do you expect it will actually have the chance of climbing back to where Windows Mobile was a couple of years back yeah you know it's tough to project growth rates just because it is such a dynamic market and oftentimes it's relative to unknown movement from the competition but you know if you look at what we've done we do feel like we are on course to grub you know slowly but surely some of the the addition of CDMA will give us more handsets in market these features will make the phones more appealing to more customers and certainly the partnership with Nokia when it hits full steam in 2012 we'll bring our phones to a lot more markets and a lot more compelling ways and we certainly feel like in aggregate those things will have a demonstrable effect well thank you very much for at a time thank your opportunity this was ends of the eye Barcelona Casey McGehee r from Microsoft you
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.